another letter to YOU ...

I have understood why I love to write so much. Guess, it is because I find it easy. Until now I have conversed about many things – my education, college professors, a new movie, the rising price, an alarming decay of human values, kids, spirituality, hilsa fish – but I do not talk about what I think or what I feel, especially words that describe pain and tears never taste good on my tongue. So I bury all my hurts deep down inside my body. May be that’s why my silences always weigh so heavy. That is why I could never relate to another human being and pain, melancholy had become most faithful of my friends till I met you.

And this is exactly what I was trying to tell you the other day. I feel normal now, like every other girl around me. I feel I don’t have to bottle up and be tensed anymore. You know, I used to feel like an envelope! I can even imagine the familiar amused indulgence twinkling in your eyes as you read this. But honestly, it was as if I am an envelope, glued and fixed. And if I let anyone come close to me they would become those paper knives and would slip through a gap innocuously only to slit me open and then I wouldn’t be able to stop or collect all those blood tinged words that will pour and spill out and get scattered all around. Hence I was guarded. So when you goaded and coaxed me to write I started living. Now I feel free. My poetry, my writings have given me wings. Do you understand that it is you who set me free? Do you want to know how I see us together here? It is as if I am running with a spool, yelling and screaming in excitement like a small girl, my hair unruly in the mountain breeze, as you release the kite and soon it unfurls above us, going higher, in a vibrant shape of clear, genuine human joy. Perhaps now you would know that my virtual communication was more because of the extent of expressing myself in terms of writing and was not so much connected with my loneliness or boredom. People did not matter so much but talking to strangers, in a way, helped in being my natural self.

But it all has changed now. You have suddenly yet firmly rooted me to the ground and among reality. And when I see you turning and reaching for me in your sleep or tucking your hand neatly under your chin, bending your knees and sleeping in peace like a baby I realize that there’s no more need for me to be celestial, to be away from the earth. A similar line of Robert Frost starts ringing into my ear and I feel earth is the place to live and love. Now my life is all about a pair of deep magnetic eyes and an unsuspected dimple. I do not need to look beyond or bygone anymore.

I know there will be other fights, other hurtful words, perhaps even tonight. Yet everything, even my ordinary kitchen utensils glitter like hope and promises. And in every nooks and corners of our house there’s so much love that oozes in intensity. I know it would guard us like a protective bubble, always.